Female athlete tryouts for U-17 Central American Tournament

Marlon Kuylen

Twenty-one female athletes seventeen years and under are being offered an opportunity of a lifetime…to represent Belize internationally in the football sport. On Saturday, the Football Federation of Belize and the National Women’s Football Committee will host open tryouts this Saturday at eight-thirty a.m. at the F.F.B. Stadium in Belmopan. The goal is to pool together the skilled athletes, born in 1997 and 1998, to represent the country in the U-seventeen Central American Tournament in which Belize will be making its debut. Essentially, the qualifying winners go on to a CONCACAF tournament. News Five spoke to F.F.B.’s Marlon Kuylen, who says that a camp will be held to prepare the athletes for the tournament.

Marlon Kuylen, Executive Member, F.F.B.

“For this type of tournament, this is for a U-seventeen Central American Tournament and the qualifying winners go on to the CONCACAF tournament.”

Rhiannon Rhamdas

“What is the criteria that the young ladies need to have?”

Marlon Kuylen

“All they need is the skills that is required and to be born in either 1997 or 1998.”

Rhiannon Rhamdas

“After the tryouts, the girls are then selected. What then happens?”

Marlon Kuylen

“We’ll select a pool of thirty players of which twenty-one will go to the tournament. So what we will do is go to camp; they’ll do a series of workouts everyday and get the proper nutrition that we need and then we go selecting the twenty-one final players that will go to Guatemala on the twenty-sixth of May and then the return match is in Belize on the second of June. I am not aware of any U-seventeen team competed before but certainly under our tenor this is the first. What we would like to do is also encourage parents to come because nine-thirty in the morning, we’ll be having a meeting for the parents.”

All persons trying out for the team are asked to bring their own football gears, a letter of permission from parent or guardian and a valid passport.

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Best wishes to our lady footballers! I hope we are seeing a new day in our sports, wherein we will have honest and competent coaches and other leaders, so the athletes themselves can determine the game on the field, with a good chance of success.